Posted
by
timothyon Sunday June 10, 2012 @09:18AM
from the low-and-despicable dept.

New submitter Progman3K writes "Richard Stallman, father of the FSF, had his bag containing his laptop, medicine, money and passport stolen after his talk at the University of Buenos Aires on Friday, June 8." Adds reader jones_supa, excerpting from the same linked story: "As a result of this occurrence, he was forced to cancel his talk in Cordoba, and it's still unknown how this will impact the rest of his speaking engagements throughout the world."

Nahhh, I'm sure as soon as the officials there see one of his lectures [youtube.com] I'm sure they'll decide "RMS wants to be free!" and push his butt into the nearest waiting plane. Whether that plane is actually going somewhere RMS WANTS to go will be another matter, but so long as he is free I'm sure the people of Argentina will be happy;-)

I think the problem is with those robbers ancient business models. Just like MPAA/RIAA, the robbers are unable to change their business model to current day. No one wants to go fetch a physical copy. Offer a copy of that password at reasonable price, over the internet and without DRM and I might buy it. Information wants to be free!

So what you're saying is the guy just wants to get in his car and drive somewhere, to do actual stuff that really needs to be done, but he can't. He can't because the DRM (the keys, if you will) authorizing the key to operate the car's ignition switch has been revoked by the machine's manufacturer?

Wait, maybe this was a rental unit while on vacation. Perhaps this is just some sort of licensing mixup maybe? Oh, I am so confused on./ lately.

Pablo Antonio:It was a very sad moment. He was really distressed. He started yelling and punching himself in the head. He was worried because he had to be in Brazil soon, and he wouldn’t make it without his passport and all. And, apparently, his notebook was stolen too, and he said he wouldn’t be able to work for a week or so because of that.

I've known Richard for decades. There's an American gesture where you close your fist and bang the top of your fist against your forehead, an expression of one's own stupidity. It's not painful, just dramatic, and it is *not* punching yourself in the head.

I've been told more recently (within the past two years) that this isn't quite true any longer: the computer in his office doesn't have a password, but he has to use one for any other machine on campus.

Hardly. Argentina issued initial disputes up until 1849 and once in 1885, but then accepted British sovereignty. It was only in 1941 that Argentina decided to bring it up again because as it does now, and as it did in '82 it had a weak government that desperately needed to stir nationalist sentiment to try and bolster it's standing and the Falklands is an easy target. It's really no coincidence that the issue only ever comes up again each time Argentina has a government that's managed to completely fuck up the country through political incompetence.

"But anyway, why does england claim a couple of islands on the other fucking side of the world and nobody thinks that's strange?"

Because it's been inhabited by British people since the 1640s with only a couple of breaks hundreds of years ago?

You could similarly ask why Alaska isn't Russian or Canadian when it's geographically closer to those nations than it is the US.

There's a number of ways to determine the nationality of a nation and geographical proximity is only one of these, others include who got there first, what the population wants, who won it militarily and the fact of the matter is that Britain wins out hands down in all of these - it's questionable whether the British or French got there first, but the French support the British claim regardless, the British have clearly won it militarily when Argentina tried that tactic, and the population is British, and has been for hundreds of years.

Fundamentally though, the United Nation's key point in terms of determining sovereignty is the will of the people living there. This is important, because no one should have to be ruled against their will, and whilst it does get abused (i.e. Russia pushing pro-Georgian people out of Georgian breakaway regions whilst making pro-Russian people Russian citizens to claim the will of the people) it is for the most part the most sensible option. It's also not as if Britain annexed it by pushing out an Argentine population, the British population has been there as long as any (including when the Spanish were there), the Spanish left, Argentina tried to settle elsewhere there on the island but with no British interference failed to do so because they were not prepared for the harsh weather and so gave up and left it.

The fact is the people living there are living their legitimately, their ancestors settled their legitimately, and they did not use any kind of force to push anyone else out. Everyone else that settled/tried to settle left of their own accord. So if the population is there legitimately, and the population wants to be British the case is pretty clear cut - Argentina just doesn't have an argument.

Again, Argentina's claim is about absolutely nothing more than bolstering a weak incompetent government with the time tested tactics of winning over the ignorant amongst society by using nationalism and populism.

It's also worth noting that Britain even offered to work with Argentina on oil exploration etc. around the islands in the late 90s to at least try and improve relations which it did not have to do, but the Argentine government at the time, again, having fucked up the economy, decided it needed to ramp up the populist rhetoric and pulled out going on about sovereignty.

Again, Argentina's arguments would have far more merit if it weren't for the fact that any claims continuously coincide with bad governance and decreasing popularity of the party in government at the time. When Argentinian governments have been doing well in the polls, they've not even brought up the issue, and have even sought to improve relationships, but every time an Argentinian government starts to struggle, it brings it up. It's pathetic.

Naah, stay there. The Argentines probably would be less hostile to him living under a bridge or on a park bench. Although I doubt that the University of Buenos Aires would take kindly if he decided to do there what he used to do in MIT - as in squat there.

If they don't think people should pay, why would they care about a person who charged for his software and encourages others to charge as much as they possible can or want? And why would they pay $840 000/year to his organization?

By the way, your post reminded me that I intended to donate to the FSF, thank you.

I can't match the sheer eloquence of the sibling poster, but this is bullshit ; all the GNU FAQs explicitly state it's totally OK to make money from Free software. It's Free as in Freedom, not as in beer.

Would you tolerate Ford selling you a car, but not allowing you to peek under the bonnet, fix it yourself, soup it up, change things around? What if your contract didn't allow you to sell on your pimped out car? What about if you wanted to give it away to your son when he gets his license, but they didn't a

What a loss, the only laptop running Gnu Hurd. The individual who stole it will be very sorry though, as he will be forced to use emacs, and as it does everything, it will be the only program on the computer...:D

It is a unique laptop - one of the few in the US from Lemote Yeedong, and based on the Loongson CPU. But it's not running Hurd - Stallman has pretty much abandoned that in favor of his favorite GNewSense. But yeah, the user will have to be an Emacs expert to find it of any use.

This is really not newsworthy. It happens in Buenos Aires all the time. I was there 2009 at Wikimania (where RMS also attended) and I in the few days I was there multiple of my friends had their bags/laptops stolen, while I was in the same room.

The thiefs are really skilled and they make it almost impossible for you to notice the theft. The only way to defend yourself is to have all your stuff at your body all the time, thus being a harder target than everyone else.

That is what i would do.if i was traveling abroad, id never let it out of my hand, and no 'Velcro flaps' either. All zipped up with a lock, even as i was holding it. ( hell i don't even leave my stuff unattended here in the states during a convention, we have thieves here too )

And i agree, it wasn't some grand conspiracy and they weren't targeting RMS personally, so it's a non story: "foreign traveler lost bag with belongings" *yawn*

( tho knowing RMS, he may think it was personal and the 'man' is out to

University of Buenos Aires is a free, public university recognized as one of the best in the world. Anyone can attend and it's also filled with students from other South American countries that travel to Buenos Aires to study. Courses are usually huge, with ~200 students each, and anyone is free to attend them as a listener, even if you are not a student. Teachers, by tradition, are expected to be professionals that excelled in their respective fields and for them it is an honor to be able to be there, all this in the spirit of having the best public education.
This much freedom has the obvious drawback that, as no one checks your student ID at the entrance, anyone can go in including thieves, which often mix up with other students to steal stuff. I've seen this happening several times myself so you have to watch out for strange people and your belongings all the time.
As pro human rights groups are so strong here (product of opposition to US-Sponsored dictatorships during most of the past century), law is lax and stronger security measures are often seen in a negative light, as the population don't know anymore where to draw the line.

Nobody checks your ID when you go to class in the US either, though there's much less of a culture of people just showing up listening in. It would often, but not always, be easier to detect a stranger in a class here, though there are plenty of 500-person freshman biology lectures, too. Typical classes have ~30 people in them.

I'm sorry, but what kind of moron keeps all this stuff together in *one* bag? Your passport should always be on your person when possible. You should have backup credit and ATM cards separate from your regular cards, along with some emergency cash. This stuff is 'Travelling 101' for god's sake.

I don't care whether you're travelling to San Francisco or Santiago - The same rules apply (in fact in some cases your stuff is safer in a police state). If this was the Kettles from Topeka travelling to Paris for the first time I think I would catch them some slack - But this guy is supposedly very bright and travels all over the place, so he should know better. I'm sorry, but there's no excuse for this sort of thing.

While I am sorry for his loss (and that is only a story because of who was robbed - a zillion other tech people get robbed in foreign countries and they don't make/.) RMS has traveled the world for years, and I would have thought he knew better about he risks of theft. His passport and money should not have been left unsecured, and he should have ascribed to a layered packing regime that I learnt about years ago that includes three general zones:

Checked luggage - Contains stuff you that you don't care if you never see it again

Hand luggage - Contains stuff you can drop and leave behind in an emergency in order to protect your personal well being

On your person - Contains stuff that is critical to your well being and ability to travel

Passport and money belongs squarely in that last category. They are replaceable, but their loss has a much greater impact on a trip than losing stuff from the other two categories.

Leaving his passport and money in an unsecured location was a stupid and idiotic move on *his* part (although I bet that that is probably somewhat offset by him being distracted for a moment). And yes I know that this sounds like blaming the victim, but there is a point where you have to take responsibility for your own actions.

I was ready to make a joke post about "information wants to be free" (before noticing that the first post already did that), but it later occurred to me--could that be exactly what happened? Remember way back when when RMS refused to put a password on his MIT account and when was forced used the password "rms" so everyone could log in? And remember him getting a fifth of users to change their password to the empty string?

If RMS is as bad in his personal security as he is in his computer security, it

Leaving his passport and money in an unsecured location was a stupid and idiotic move on *his* part (although I bet that that is probably somewhat offset by him being distracted for a moment). And yes I know that this sounds like blaming the victim, but there is a point where you have to take responsibility for your own actions.

If you just change a few specifics, but not the tenor, in your argument, you'll get a drastically different result. To wit:

"Leaving her hotel room dressed like such a slut was a stupid and idiotic move on *her* part. And yes, I know that this sounds like blaming the victim, but there is a point where you have to take responsibility for your own actions."

Carry your passport/docs ON YOU, separate from your wallet, end of story.

Passport, Wallet, Phone. That's enough to get me from anywhere in the world to a friendly country (i.e. visaless), so that's what always stays in my jeans pocket.

I also make sure I have half a dozen phone numbers memorised that I can call 24/7 in an emergency.

That's basic security at home or abroad. You should also carry duplicate info on a flash drive and wear that, and be able to access another copy online.

Certainly. Having scans of your passport(s) and visas available in a secure gmail account, that someone trusted (that isn't travelling with you) also has access too, is a good precaution. I don't bother with the USB stick any more (I have them on my la

According to a testimonial, the whole incident was pretty thought through. The robbers replaced Stallman's bag with an identical, albeit empty one at the end of the talk. On top of it, the canera on which the whole conference (and probably the robbers) was filmed got stolen too. The op name is lucas romero if you want to try to find it. ill post a link when i get home

> Perhaps he would had been better off if he made a living producing software and selling it.

Maybe he would; but we're surely better off since he chose to benefit mankind over himself.

Don't get me wrong, this is not a religious thing... but IMHO overall tech progress got a powerful impulse with the GPL and things like Linux (or GNU/Linux in his lingo). It's easy to underestimate the role of Free Software in mankind's advancement.

Now it would be nice if someone explained that to the thief. Argentinians have an advanced culture and possibly even a thief might grok why it is important not to take this man's passport.

And I earn my paychecks because of the various free platforms that are available thanks to GNU. Although we sell our end product, it runs on OS's that are free, written using free compilers and tools, connects to backends running free software, stores customer data in free software databases, etc. The business side does use a lot of non-free software though.

I'd be curious to find an accounting of what percentage of business value out there can be traced down to being "enabled" by free software vs. non-free software.

Why is Richard Stallman's religious fervour around free software any less extreme than Apple's religious fervour over their commercial-software based walled garden approach?

I'm not saying you're an Apple fanboi and whilst I myself use and work with Linux and free software, even I believe Stallman's views are somewhat extreme, and that harmony exists somewhere along the line that joins Stallman to Apple - namely that there's a place for both free and commercial software.

I'm Argentine. I avoid problematic areas. But this happened during a conference. In ALL conferences in EVERY country stuff is robbed cause people are idiots. And security guards are idiots.
THAT's common sense.
Avoiding an entire country is plan idiocy.

I was born in Argentina too. The post author above was talking the best he could on his second language (as I am doing here), while I bet most of you can only talk English. Still, you made fun of him, and yes, it was funny, but that does not encourage participation. Now, on the topic: Buenos Aires has become a dangerous place in the last 10 or so years, and if you travel there you need to watch over your belongings and know when/where you can go and when/where you cannot. You can get robbed, scammed, or attacked if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. I agree with the comment that said that Argentina is more and more resembling an African nation. And the people living there has no reference to compare, and passionately will defend their country's image against all logic. All that said, there is no excuse for this. Like him or not, RMS has been and is a very important influence in the world of software, and without crazies like him we will probably not have free Linux and all the free software that is available around and most of us use. He deserves better. The person who stole from him did not care or did not knew about him. Now, avoiding an entire country because you are afraid it is not as civilised as your own country, or your experience would be unfamiliar, seems extreme.

I used to run a stall at UKUUG conferences (admittedly not an international event) selling Linux CDs and stuff. Because I wanted to listen to the talks I would leave the stand unattended at times. I regularly came back to find collections of piles of money on the table from people who'd served themselves.

That's an extremely ignorant comment. RMS has been to Argentina (and around Latin America) plenty of times without any problems. Shit happens. And it can happen in your beloved first-world New York too.

1) Argentina was quite prosperous at one time, but the past decade or so has been really hard on them. Their economic problems have caused a significant drop in the standard of living for many of its citizens, and crime has become much more of an issue. Today, it is much more akin to an African nation than it is to a Western nation.

As an Argentinian myself, i have to (sadly) agree. The standard of living for major cities (Cordoba, Rosario, Buenos Aires) has dropped sharply in the past decade, but it is practically nonexistant once you travel to the north, where basic services like running water, electricity, or sewers are scarce if present at all.

That said, Buenos Aires is more akin to a typical european city. But crime rates are horribly high - the citys' premimum neighborhoods and locations sits next to a shantytown so big it's almost a favela by now. You got to be careful if visiting.

Because i do live there. Argentinas' GDP has doubled sure enough, but his government expenditure went through the roof as well, reaching US$150,000 millions in 2011. Thats almost 40% of the GDP. If properly executed, on paper this should mean that Argentina has a better quality of life than Switzerland. Rest assured, it is not.

Ah, and an unemployment rate of 25% is atrocious. It's akin to third world countries, or countries undergoing deep recession like Spain... or Argentina in 2002, which you're comparing

And in today's world, avoiding third-world nations "just because" is ridiculous. You're saying that executives from Apple should never have gone to China. You're saying that Venezuela, a member of OPEC, should never have members from other OPEC nations visiting there. And where do you draw the line...I'm not sure I'd consider Argentina a third-world country just because they had an economic breakdown...and there is no way they are more akin to an African country than a Western one. If a financial meltdown with long-term effects qualifies a country for third world status, then why not Japan? They still haven't recovered from the financial collapse that happened in the 90s.

And let's keep something in mind...this was Richard Stallman speaking at a conference in a major city. This was not him going off into a remote area in the countryside to dig a well. There are places in most American states where he'd be statistically more likely to come to harm than he was in that hotel. Petty crime is what happens in such places, and little else.

The reason why the post had been modded down...and why it should still be, even if it is not...is because the whole point of it is ridiculous. For a soccer mom to avoid nations with shaky economies? Fine, if a bit wimpy. But for large-impact entities...be they people or simply influential people at large organizations...to shun safe areas in third-world countries because of petty crime is entirely infeasible, self-defeating, and frankly smacks of the armchair thinking of someone who has never ventured outside middle America. The world is global; that's how it is now.

The point wasn't about pretty landmarks tho, it was about the fact that, if there *ARE* buildings like that, then the economy can't be that bad. If there are cars filling the streets, and if the roads are nice to drive on, then the economy isn't that terrible (again: "yet"). I can see we're going straight to hell if Cristina doesn't react soon - it's going the same way as De L

As someone how lives in buenos aires, I must tell you; you're quite wrong.I know which places to go to, and which no to go to. If you take a wrong turn, and walk 4 blocks down the wrong street, it might be your last wrong turn. Or you might just get mugged.

I had a friend who got mugged waiting for the bus on their first trip to BA. It wan't just her though; it was the entire line of people waiting for the bus. Inside the main Terminal in Retiro, Buenos Aires.

It's a mix... you have a small area that's first-world-ish, and the area next to it is almost third-world-ish.

It's the world that needs more openness. And better utilization of the technology we do have.

Losing the passport wouldn't be such a calamity if governments were up to date. We shouldn't even use a physical item like that for purposes of verifying identity and permissions. At a border crossing, stating names and perhaps a number, or undergoing a brief biometric scan ought to be all that travelers need do. The officials at the border can then use their networked computers to check the information. It's just dopey to rely on the picture of a person carried by that person to check identity! That's as dopey as DRM. Yeah, yeah, like cash they have put security threads and watermarks and such on the passport pictures, to make forgery more difficult. And don't forget the embedded RFID chip! Currently, with passports the US now issues business sized cards for your wallet. The cards have useful phone numbers and a space upon which you are supposed to write your passport number, for just such an occurrence. Haven't progressed much!

As for personal data, no one should ever have the only copies of their work on a single laptop, except possibly for whatever was being worked on in the last few minutes or since the last time the laptop had been connected to the Internet. The laptop itself is pretty cheap these days. I hope RMS didn't lose any data. Passwords are similar. Never have unencrypted passwords or or other unencrypted sensitive data on a laptop. But if he wasn't up to scratch on that stuff, this could be the worst loss of all.

Medicines shouldn't be a big deal either. Unfortunately, they can be thanks to intellectual property law. At $5/pill for typical name brand drugs, those medicines could easily cost more to replace than everything else in the bag.

Money? Let's hope he's not in the habit of lugging around thousands of dollars in cash. Sensible travelers only carry a little cash, leaning on credit cards whenever possible. But I could see a guy like RMS scorning credit cards because they come with lots of baggage, like the tracking of your every purchase. At any rate, banks, like governments, are woefully behind on technology. Shouldn't need a piece of plastic to do a transaction.

With all that said, his Argentine hosts treated him very shabbily. If laptop bag theft is such a big problem, they should know that. It's their home, they ought to know what protections guests will need, what crimes are in vogue. Should have had someone or something watching his bag. Wasn't anyone recording his speech on video? There's no footage at all of his bag being swiped? That a thief got away with his bag doesn't speak well of them. They seem negligent at the least. Such thefts may be aided by corruption. I shouldn't wonder that petty theft of that nature is a very low priority for their police, who will undoubtedly say there's nothing they can do.

. We shouldn't even use a physical item like that for purposes of verifying identity and permissions. At a border crossing, stating names and perhaps a number, or undergoing a brief biometric scan ought to be all that travelers need do. The officials at the border can then use their networked computers to check the information. It's just dopey to rely on the picture of a person carried by that person to check identity! That's as dopey as DRM. Yeah, yeah, like cash they have put security threads and watermarks and such on the passport pictures, to make forgery more difficult. And don't forget the embedded RFID chip! Currently, with passports the US now issues business sized cards for your wallet. The cards have useful phone numbers and a space upon which you are supposed to write your passport number, for just such an occurrence. Haven't progressed much!

Shure, go ahead and recruit people for the globally replicated, government controlled biometric scan database.
And a ton of countries already use a version of the electronic passport. While you see a security guard, many implementations rely on your biometric data stored inside the rfid chip to perform facial recognition. And you know what the best part is? The data is usually encrypted, but the private key is also stored on the chip, so you can actually tamper and re-sign the data so it's valid. How is tha

An overwhelming majority of the server/desktop/laptop Linux distributions are what you call GNU/Linux. The only notable exceptions I know of are Android, and embedded systems that use busybox due to performance/memory constraints.

Very very few people has actually used some mythical "vanilla Linux" that isn't operated with the GNU tools.

Do simple things like this and you too can be on your way to a much better paying job.

Dear anonymous coward, while I laud your efforts I feel that you are making a false assumption to start with - that the editors want to improve on their lot in life. I am coming to the opinion that that they are raking in so much $$ for so little work that they don't care about the quality.

Right, because OSX with "TattleTale" would surely have prevented the theft and RMS could never have jammed together a shell script with the same functionality as "TattleTale" within half an hour if he had wanted to.

Oh, I'm sure he must be having all source code on his laptop. It's not an Intel x86, remember, it's a hybrid of a MIPS w/ some x86 support instructions, so he'd need to compile stuff that he wants to run.